A U.S. senator who just returned from a congressional trip to Russia warned against trusting President Vladimir Putin, saying that dealing with the Russian government is like “dealing with the mafia.”

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., recently went with other GOP senators to see first-hand the Russian economy and meet with government officials. But the meetings, ahead of President Donald Trump’s planned summit with Putin on July 16, turned “cantankerous” at times, he said. He described Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as a “bully.”

“There is no political philosophy in Russia. It’s sort of like saying, what’s the political philosophy of the mafia,” Kennedy told reporters Monday on Capitol Hill…